Cryptic recently announced that Champions Online will be going free-to-play in 2011, but do they plan on appreciating their non-subscribers? Senior Staff Writer Chris Tom shares his thoughts on the topic.

When Champions Online (CO) originally made it out the door last year, there was no doubt that this was a game that needed more polish and content if it wanted to compete in the industry. While character creation and customization in CO were beyond top-notch, the game suffered from repetitive and sparse leveling content in addition to having significant problems with pacing; giving players everything they wanted in the first ten levels, but being unable to continue that rate of delivery in the levels beyond. Moving forward to a year later and, while there are still some problems with pacing in the game, the content situation has been addressed fairly significantly in the form of reworked zones (and more revamps on the way) and a few "Adventure Packs" for players to enjoy. In fact, given some more time and development, Champions Online would have done a decent job of surviving in an industry where one superhero MMORPG ought to have been good enough but, for some strange reason, we will have three by next year (City of Heroes, Champions Online and DC Universe Online).

Decent, however, is not what Cryptic wants to be, and so they've decided to make the shift from their current subscription based model to the more agile free-to-play model with dozens of microtransaction options. You can almost hear the thought process behind this shift: if Turbine could, literally, revive Dungeons & Dragons Online while also revitalizing their Lord of the Rings Online community with a revenue model shift, surely Champions Online can do the same! Unfortunately, this may not be the case if you understand the fundamental differences that Turbine and Cryptic have in dealing with their new revenue models.

This is how Executive Producer Shannon "poz" Posniewski wants to see things play out in 2011: there will be two "tiers" of players in Champions Online; Gold and Silver players. Gold players will retain their original subscription fee to gain access to everything in-game, in addition to a monthly stipend of Cryptic points to spend on microtransaction items. Silver players, on the other hand, are those who fall under the umbrella definition of not being Gold players (that is, if you don't pay a subscription fee, then you're a Silver player, case closed). Silver players will need to purchase luxury things like additional character slots, additional bags (Gold players get four, Silver players get one), specific Gold travel powers and all of the previously mentioned adventure packs.

In reality, the big difference between Gold players (the subscribers) and the Silver players (the free-to-play players who utilize CO's microtransaction store) lies in the level of customization they will have with their champions. Ability tinting and custom archetypes are strictly off limits to Silver players and, currently speaking, there are no plans to ever make them accessible except by paying a subscription fee (and becoming a Gold player). Silver players will, instead, have access to "base archetypes," which are essentially developer-created skillsets that best represent one of eight specific roles. As the Cryptic team has put it, "customization is the central theme to Gold players. . . whereas Silver players have a limited set to choose from."

And this is where things get odd.